TL;DR – Is it as good as its marketing campaign, no, that was pure genius, but it is still pretty darn good and a fun film to watch, though so so so so so not for kids.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

P.S. yes there is something after the credits

Review –

This is a really interesting film for a number of reasons, firstly most (if not all) comic book movies stick hard and fast to the American PG-13 rating, it’s safe and opens it up to a wider audience, instead, Deadpool went for its American R rating with gusto. It’s also a film that has to fit in the X-Men universe, but then it also has to stay true to the source which has a unique style that destroys the 4th wall at times. It has Ryan Reynolds as its lead, and unfortunately he doesn’t have many more chances left to be a headliner (after The Green Lantern, which to be fair was not his fault), it is also a film that has been in development hell since the early 2000s, taking a ‘leaked’ proof of concept trailer for people to greenlight the film. So here we are after a simply brilliant advertising campaign, what kind of film do we have? A pretty good one, but also a very adult film, I mean a very adult film, like seriously the whole 9 yards, like how did they get away with that, adult film.

Firstly the good, the casting is top notch, Ryan Reynolds is captivating as the titular Deadpool which is really important in a film like this. You can tell he has a lot of passion for the role (he spent a decade trying to get this film made), he riffs well with the cast, a standout being with Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) who plays the more traditional hero, as compared to Deadpool’s more, um, aggressive style. It is kind of nice to see someone who really cares for something and appears to be a genially good guy succeed. Morena Baccarin (Vanessa Carlysle) plays off Reynolds really well as his equally damaged (in many ways) romantic interest. The fight scenes are quite good, some nice use of slow motion at times, and the final rumble was quite good, though the smaller budget shows in places. A tip of my hat to whoever designed the opening sequence, I have not laughed at credits like that since Monty Python.

It’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, in its attempt to live up to the hype, it doesn’t quite get there. Not all the jokes land (though most do), and like all films that tend to the more comedic side of things, a lot of the really good ones were in the trailer, so they kind of lose their impact in the film. While it is not as big as of an offender of this that some other R comedic films, there still are a number of jump scare style jokes which get a bit tiresome. As well as this, the bad guys are really all a bit bland, most of them have no personality or are simply stereotypes, I mean, ‘my mutant ability is I can’t feel … anything’. As well as this Deadpool’s comedic relief Weasel (T. J. Miller) added nothing to the film really.

One of the big problems that Deadpool will have is that it is a very polarizing film of the people I have talked to etc. people either love it or hate it, so going forward it will be interesting to see if they double down on what people liked to try to reach out to a larger audience. In the end I enjoyed it, but then I really like that style of meta humour that you see in things like 22 Jump Street etc., but if you don’t like that meta humour then you have to like the kind of film where someone chases a bad guy down with a Zamboni for fun, if you don’t like that it’s going to be a hard film to sit through.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Directed by –Tim Miller
Screenplay by – Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese
Starring – Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapičić & Leslie Uggams
Rating – Australia: MA15+; Canada: 14A; Ireland: 16; NZ: R16; UK: 15; USA: R